Miss Fisher - Book To Small Screen

I had considered going to the beach today, but when I got home I was just too hot and tired, so I decided to catch up with the first episode of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, which was an adaptation of Cocaine Blues.

First, I'd like to say it was visually stunning and Essie Davis was perfect for the role of Phryne Fisher. I did recognise a couple of parts of Melbourne. The Windsor Hotel, of course, where Phryne stays, and I think the Andrews mansion was Ripponlea, which is right near the ABC studios and has been used for a LOT of fancy venues, from the Aussie Embassy in Embassy,  a series about an embassy in an Asian country to a millionaire's home in Mission Impossible. In the scene where Phryne disembarks in Melbourne, she is wearing a dress very much as described in the book.

Phryne and Dr Macmillan - see what I mean about the costume?

I did understand why a lot had to be cut to fit it all into one hour. I'm not sure why it was necessary to add characters and a back story with a murdered sister to bring Phryne back to Melbourne. The TV Lydia Andrews is an old friend of Phryne's, Dr Macmillan is a lot younger than the book Macmillan and Australian instead of Scottish. She does, however, wear the kind of mannish clothes the doctor in the book was wearing. Policeman Hugh Collins has been brought in early, which is okay, as long as his romance with Dot starts at the right time. Phryne's maid Dot starts off as Lydia Andrews's maid, instead of meeting Phryne in the Block Arcade while trying to avenge herself against the horrible son of her former employer. She does hate telephones,as in the books. Sasha the Russian dancer is a lot older than the one in the novel, but I guess Phryne would have looked like a cradle-snatcher if he'd been as young as he was in the book. It works in the novel, but on screen it might not have.

 I won't go into any more detail here, lest you have missed this and are a fan of the books. Just go to iView and watch. Then let me know what you think. Looks like they must be skipping Flying Too High, because next week's episode is Murder On The Ballarat Train. I think the series is going to be fun.

 Meanwhile, if you haven't read the books, for heaven's sake, buy them! They're a good investment because you'll want to re-read them, long after you know whodunnit.

Popular Posts And Other Stuff

It's weird, you know. Browsing through the posts on my blog, I wonder at the ones that are the most popular. Take the H.I.V.E reviews, for example. A couple of them are near the top of the list and I can totally understand that. The books have a well-deserved fandom. But other H.I.V.E reviews have had very few hits and I ask - why? It's the same series, right? You'd think something with "Tolkien" in the tags would get stacks of hits, but no - my birthday toast post has very few. You know what's top of the hits list? A very short post in which I direct readers to my final post on Insideadog, without even remembering to put in a link. I just said I was tired, after a day supervising student fundraising activities, and was going to bed. That post has had more hits than anything else on my blog, including the also-popular post called " Who Washes The Dishes in Rivendell?", a bit of whimsy about the lack of domestication among Tolkien's Elves, who somehow manage to create fabulous feasts. It has had more hits than the great interview my student Thando did with Juliet Marillier back in December 2010. And THAT was read by hundreds! So was the review of the Andy Griffiths book, but poor Andy couldn't compete with the Dog's final post. Maybe I'd better go back and put in a link, though there have been some great Writers In Residence since then. It was a great experience, by the way, and I have been told that the site gets thousands of hits a day. Despite that, writers blogging there wonder if anyone is reading, because the comments section is too hard to reach, you have to know how, and then you have to wait till a moderator reads your comment and - maybe! - publishes it. And it only shows once you click the heading. No wonder I only got three comments that month, two from friends and one from a determined young reader who never did get her gift of bookmarks because I didn't find the comment till my stint was over. I did try, got Michael Pryor, the December WIR, to advertise. I'm told that's on their to-do list, by Heath, a friendly CYL staff member(who is in my good books after his lovely review of Wolfborn.)maybe I should do the same as Stephanie of RIASS, who tweets "vintage" posts well worth a read.

Mark Walden Interview Real Soon now

Today I got the reply to my questions sent to Mark Walden and they were worth the wait. As soon as they have been prettied up a bit(format, not editing) the interview will be up. Sonia Palmisano of Bloomsbury tells me the reason it took a liile while to come through is that the author of H.I.V.E is starting a brand new series, something to look forward to. No, I don't know what it is, but as soon as the first is available, I will read and review it for you. Be patient!

CYL anniversary celebration

Tonight I attended the first event of the Booktalkers year, the 21st anniversary of the Centre for Youth Literature. Of course, the founder of the Centre, Agnes Nieuwenhuizen, was there.

Here she is, speaking to us, holding up a book she picked up at Reading's.

Sorry I have so many heads in front, but those are distinguished heads. That gentleman is Mike Shuttleworth, who ran the CYL for several years and is now a TL at Princes Hill SC and doing the Melbourne Writers' Festival. Next to him is Maureen McCarthy, whose wonderful YA novels were first recommended to me by students when I was doing a stint at the very library when Mike is now lucky enough to work. The lady in red next to her is Libby Gleeson, author of a lot of very popular YA books. They had all been involved with the Centre at one time or another - Maureen spoke of how she had encountered Agnes while teaching children's writing at RMIT and unsure of how to go about it.

Other panellists included Jenny Lovell, who arranges all those great little acts that go with the Teenage Booktalker sessions. She first met Agnes when the CYL was located at St Martin's, which had a youth theatre at the time (Agnes once told me that she gave them a copy of my book Potions To Pulsars to use for research for a show they were doing on women scientists). These guys were reminiscing about their experiences with Agnes, who sat on the side, moderating.

Boori Monty Pryor, who is one of the new Children's Laureates, was there because Agnes had a connection with his very first book (and I remember how he spoke of his father handing out copies, which made me think of my own father).

Erica Wagner was on the panel too. I have known her for years, since I first tried to sell her Wolfborn while she was about to leave Penguin. She said no, but read it again when she got to A&U. She said no again, but at least she gave it a go.

Agnes herself ,instead of a talk about the history of the CYL, did a quiz, offering chocolates to those who answered her questions.

The big guest speakers for the evening were David Levithan, some of whose books I've read and enjoyed, and Melina Marchetta. I enjoyed hearing both of them and bought two of his books - I'd read just about everything else on the bookseller table.

The place was overflowing with big names in writing - I encountered a number of my Twitter buddies and several writers and publishers I've known over the years.

I wore my Wolfborn t-shirt by way of promo. It would have been nice to have someone ask about it, but no such luck. Maybe my sister is right to say that these things aren't as useful as you might think. :-(

However, I don't regret wearing it, because it meant I was recognised and pounced on by, would you believe, Melina Marchetta, who was delighted with my review of Froi of the Exiles and had, while she was about it, read my post about Dad. She said she could relate, because of her own relationship with her Dad.

I met Cassandra Golds, who is best-known as a novelist these days, but I remember from the NSW School Magazine, where she used to work, and we ad a chat about Geoffrey McSkimming, author of those deliciously funny Cairo Jim novels, who also used to work for the NSWSM (maybe still does?) She once rejected an article of mine, but eventually bought it on a re-write.

I had a chat with Miffy, whom I interviewed about a month ago, and Paul Collins, whom I gave some Crime Time bookmarks.

We all had some cake which Agnes cut, and I left for home about 9.15 pm.

However, it's getting on for midnight now, as I missed my tram, so I'm off to bed.

Good night, all!

Welcome, Abby, Melpomene and Terry!

Welcome to my newest followers!

Terry Morris is a Melbourne SF fan, librarian and baby photographer whom I've known for years through fandom. I'm following her son Raph's blog. Actually, Terry has been following this blog under another name for some time, but I'll keep that private. ;-) She does have a blog, but it's under her pseudonym, so when she gives me permission I will add a link.

Melpomene is a Melbourne poet, who in her day job is a teacher studying teacher-librarianship. We met on Twitter and, as we both love YA books and work in disadvantaged state schools, have plenty in common, including running literary clubs in the library at lunchtime.

Abby, AKA The Director, is a young blogger in the US who runs a wonderful blog called Castles, Quills and Cameras. We met on her web site when I commented on her post about the movie of Eagle of the Ninth. I think it's great when teenagers are running their own blogs, especially when they are as mature and articulate as Abby - so much so that I didn't know how young she was till she mentioned it in an email.

Link added to medical facts blog!

Okay, I've added the promised link to Jordyn Redwood's fabulous medical facts blog. Scroll down the right hand side of this page. Go check out the site and see what she will do to help you with your writing. or, even if you're not a writer, have fun with the posts. The most recent is how she found a jarring scene in a book by a well-known writer who should have known better or at least checked up before writing about a character being on a valium drip!

Another Fabulous - And Useful - blog

Many years ago, when I was writing fan fiction, a fannish doctor, Mary G.T.Webber, read one too many stories in which characters suffered such agonising - and improbable - injuries as a broken spleen. It wasn't limited to fan fiction either. In the BBC SF series Blake's 7, anti-hero Avon was knocked over the head so many times with no apparent ill-effects that she speculated it might be a cause of his craziness in the final season. She wrote an article called "How to hurt your hero" and oh, my, how we all hunted for a copy! This, you understand, was pre-Internet, when you just had to look it up in books. Not everyone had that patience and people continued to give their heroes broken spleens.

 Well, my fellow writers, I have discovered an entire BLOG dedicated to "how to hurt your hero"!

 The blogger is an American writer whose day job is paediatric emergency nursing, so she knows what she is talking about. Jordyn Redwood is running this blog for the benefit of those of us who want to get it right in our fiction and she deserves a round of applause for it. She is planning, as a part of the blog, a timeline of medical discoveries so that you don't, for example,have your hero treated with penicillin in 1915. I've offered my assistance as a librarian, as Jordyn is, after all, a writer who wants to get on with that as well as blog. I'm now following and will put up a link on the side of this page as son asI get back to my laptop (too fiddly on iPad) Meanwhile, why not check it out?

 Here's the link. http://www.jordynredwood.com/

National Year of Reading Launch

Tuesday was not only Valentine's Day, it was the launch of the National Year of Reading. All over the country, libraries and other such institutions celebrated reading.

There was one at Sunshine Library, where the GoH was John Marsden, author of the Tomorrow When The War Began series. I went there with four students from 8B, my homeroom. Three of them, Vincent, Natasha and Braydon, are members of my book club. The fourth, Corey, is Dylan's brother. He isn't a keen reader himself, but asked if he might come and of course, I was delighted to have him with me.

We set off right after school. Natasha and I walked together, while the boys charged ahead, but fortunately, by the time we got as far as our senior campus we found them again - oddly, behind us!

It was a warm day, quite a hot walk. By the time we got to the library, we were all very thirsty. I'd brought a bottle of water, but it wasn't very cool, so we were all pleased to get inside the library, where cold cordial was on offer. I took photos of the students with books in hand, outside the library; it will be submitted for the college newsletter and hopefully for the magazine, but without parental permission, I can't show them here, so instead, here's a photo of the cake, which was cut after the launch.

Pretty, isn't it?

After a speech by one of the library staff, we heard John Marsden. He only spoke for a few minutes, about how he loves libraries, and shared memories of his childhood experiences in the school library, which was divided by grade level, only he finished all the Grade 3 books before the end of the year, so had run out of books.

After John's talk, he very generously handed out copies of a couple of his books to the children and teens. Corey thoughtfully took a copy of a novel for Robert, a great Marsden fan who couldn't make it that day. He and Vincent left for the Sunshine Plaza, with parents' permission, but Braydon and Natasha were waiting for their parents to pick them up, so got their books signed (more photos for the school magazine!) A photographer wandering around asked permission to take their photos for the library's web site, but permission had to wait till Braydon's mother arrived (Natasha declined the offer).

The photographer photographed him lounging on the library's "Reading Chair"; we will be looking out for him on the web site as soon as the disc is delivered to the library. He certainly enjoyed having his picture taken!

We all had cake and received a library bag with a few goodies in it (balloon, USB bracelet, a heart-shaped chocolate). I waited with Natasha for her father to pick her up and we had a chat about the Sunshine Harvester on display outside the library.

She said she'd had a good time and thanked me for taking her.

I headed for the station, exhausted after the long day, and met Carmel Shute, head of Sisters In Crime, who works in Sunshine and lives out my way, so  I had someone to discuss books with most of the way home.

An enjoyable, if tiring, afternoon.

Spam Comments

This morning I deleted a spam "comment" that had appeared in my comment box overnight. I haven't seen one in a while, so I read carefully before deciding it was spam, even though the so-called comment was followed by an advertising link. The spammer had actually given a name. Probably a fake one, though I guess even spammers have to have names. Out of curiosity I checked the spammer's profile and sure enough it was very recent, followed by a long list of advertising sites. They're quite good, these spammers. I was actually sucked in once and published the comment,before taking a good look at it. They write something like, "I really love your site, I'm using this for research,keep up the good work!" The thing is, they never explain how your actual post helps them in their research or say what they're researching, apart, perhaps, from how many suckers - whoops,customers- they can get through spamming. They never comment on the post itself. This one was attached to one of my interviews and totally irrelevant to it. I did once get a comment from someone who had been trying to contact me and couldn't find an email address, but since then I've put in a contact link. So, to future spammers, don't bother visiting this site. I'll catch you out every time.